Wrong Pill in Bottle

[DogDad]

Recently taking my Tadalafil, I tilted the bottle to get out a pill and almost popped it in my mouth, but it didn't feel right. The Tadalafils are football shaped/colored and this one was a little white round pill, that was actually a thyroid medication. I brought the bottle and pill into the pharmacy and spoke to the Manager. He informed me, that the Rx are actually filled at a centralized facility (it's a supermarket pharmacy) and that they use robots. Nevertheless, he said this must be reported and he took the pill and noted the information on the bottle. I was a bit shocked to hear they are using robots for filling Rx, had no idea. From now on I will be more careful checking pills before taking.

 

[like2]

Good information, glad you caught it!
Thanks for sharing!

 

[rk911]

I wonder if that's why one of my wife's Rx was wrong. Her refill was for 90-tabs but when she started to fill her weekly pill box she thought the bottle was light and, after counting, found that the bottle contained just 60. The label indicated 90-pills. When I called the pharmacy they told me to bring the bottle in. When I did they gave me the missing 30-tabs.

We've been using this pharmacy for 15+ years. I've gotten to know the mgr and clerks and they greet me by name and we're not going to change pharmacies. We've never had any sort of issue until this. I chalked it up to 'stuff happens'. I know that some of our scripts are filled at a central facility and not at the pharmacy, The Rx in question was filled at that central facility. I've always assumed humans were filling scripts...maybe bots?

 

[Koolau]

I wonder if that's why one of my wife's Rx was wrong. Her refill was for 90-tabs but when she started to fill her weekly pill box she thought the bottle was light and, after counting, found that the bottle contained just 60. The label indicated 90-pills. When I called the pharmacy they told me to bring the bottle in. When I did they gave me the missing 30-tabs.

We've been using this pharmacy for 15+ years. I've gotten to know the mgr and clerks and they greet me by name and we're not going to change pharmacies. We've never had any sort of issue until this. I chalked it up to 'stuff happens'. I know that some of our scripts are filled at a central facility and not at the pharmacy, The Rx in question was filled at that central facility. I've always assumed humans were filling scripts...maybe bots?

A bot OUGHT to be better at a mind-numbing task such as counting out pills (the right pills) AND it should be easy to teach a bot to look for discrepancies such as an odd pill. Having said that, human judgment for that one in a million mix-up seems more likely to catch something than a well-trained bot. Just sayin'.

 

[Texas Proud]

Heck, robots have been filling regular prescriptions for over a decade (heck, longer as my BIL died in 2008)... he used to talk to a firm that did it for my sister and him and even was given a tour back then..

The error rate is supposed to be a lot less then with humans...

I bet that the one pill got stuck somewhere in the system and then dropped into your bottle.. I disagree with the above that humans would be better at it... well, except for getting a wrong pill in a bottle...I had been shorted of pills a few times before robots...

 

[braumeister]

I found an incorrect pill in a bottle of my wife's meds once, a few years ago. Reported it for the record.
Once in all these decades didn't bother me much.

 

[freedomatlast]

When my kids were young, we got a prescription filled for an antibiotic for one of them. The bottle was labeled correctly but there was heart medication in the bottle instead of an antibiotic. We only caught this because we were familiar with what the antibiotic was supposed to look like.

When we returned to the pharmacy, they seemed unconcerned, were unapologetic, and it seemed that what happened wasn't abnormal. Then they tried to charge us for the antibiotic a second time.

Messages to the corporate office were returned with a boiler plate statement like "Customer safety is our top priority, blah, blah, blah. Nothing about corrective action to prevent it from happening again.

 

[Jerry1]

This is one of the problems with generics. They don’t all look the same even though they’re supposed to be chemically identical. My pharmacy gives me my blood pressure medication from different manufacturers and I’m always worried because it’s shaped/sized differently. I check the label and do a search to see if things look right, but it’s always a concern. Thankfully I’ve never had an error yet.

 

[braumeister]

This is one of the problems with generics. They don’t all look the same even though they’re supposed to be chemically identical. My pharmacy gives me my blood pressure medication from different manufacturers and I’m always worried because it’s shaped/sized differently. I check the label and do a search to see if things look right, but it’s always a concern. Thankfully I’ve never had an error yet.

I have noticed that most (if not all) pill bottles have a description of the contents in small print on the label. "Round gray pill with "12" on one side" or something like that. It takes the guesswork out of it.
Occasionally I have had to google my own description of a pill I found on the floor (yes, I can be clumsy) and that has never failed to elicit a full description of what the medication is.

 

[Just_Steve]

All prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) pills in the U.S. are required by the FDA to have an imprint code, which usually includes numbers or letters. If a pill has no imprint, it could be a vitamin, supplement, or an illegal drug

This web site allows you to ID any prescription pill by number

https://www.drugs.com/imprints.php

 

[audreyh1]

I noticed at our small HEB pharmacy that there was some type of automated pill bottle filling system running.

 

[RetiredHappy]

The issue that we have with generics is that each manufacturer uses different shapes, sizes and colors. So even when the shape, size and color differ from the previous refill, I wouldn't know if it is due to a mistake or a change of generic manufacturer/supplier. I can look at the old and new bottles to see if the manufacturer is different.

When I read the original post, my first thought is that a mistake might not have been made, but instead the (generic) drug is from a different manufacturer.